This book, based on the proceedings of a conference organised by the OECD and the Bank of England's Centre for Banking Studies, examines cross-country issues related to the conduct of monetary policy in emerging markets and the role of inflation targeting in improving macroeconomic performance....

This paper reviews Brazil's growth performance over the last quarter of a century and discusses the main determinants of a pick-up in growth since the mid-1990s. Emphasis is placed on the policy pay-offs associated with a consolidation of macroeconomic adjustment, which is a pre-condition for...

Chile's labour force participation is low in comparison with Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Latin American countries on average, especially among females and youths. This article estimates the main determinants of labour supply and employment for prime-age...

The need for infrastructure building, replacement and updating is large worldwide and governments - particularly subnational governments - will need to mobilise budgetary resources while simultaneously restoring public finances to sound health and meeting other spending pressures. This paper...

Local governments often set up inter-municipal consortia to provide public services jointly, rather than individually. The main benefits of joint provision include the potential for improved cost-effectiveness arising from gains from economies of scale and the internalisation of costs and/or...

With this paper I test the hypothesis that, by giving people more voice in the government decision-making process, fiscal decentralisation fosters social capital, measured in terms of interpersonal trust. Empirical evidence based on World Values Survey data and seemingly unrelated probit...

This paper assesses empirically whether or not current account reversals have permanent growth effects and the role of macroeconomic policies in this process. The methodology developed in de Mello, Padoan and Rousova (2010) to identify a chronology of current account reversals is applied to the...

The impact of local government spending on output growth is estimated using a panel of Brazilian municipalities during 1985-1994. Attention is focused on three expenditure categories, housing/urbanization, health/sanitation, and transport services, which are expected to be growth-enhancing, and...